


inhabit and impersonate

by orphan_account



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Identity Issues, Mental Illness, did cw, drabble of sorts, personality disorder cw, please mind the tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 23:05:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8179178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Natasha Romanoff is not the original





	

**Author's Note:**

> snippets of an idea that's been sitting in my drafts for a year or so that i may revisit in-depth at a later date

During his interrogation, Loki pauses, stares. “There’s more than one of you in there, isn’t there?” he says. She doesn't know how to answer that.

\--

She tells everyone made up horrors of the Red Room, pretends to be haunted by her past, pretends to be closed off because of it, because that’s what they want to hear, what they expect. The truth is, she doesn’t remember anything.

\--

Natasha Romanoff is not the original. Her first memory is of her staring down an arrow belonging to one Clint Barton. She doesn’t have a single hint of a memory as to how she got there, but by the cuts on her arms she must’ve been in a fight. Barton’s face morphs into surprise and suspicion when she agrees to go with him.

\--

She researches her own history in secret, puts together puzzle pieces to build the picture of the life of Natalia Romanova. She reads up on her file S.H.I.E.L.D. has on her first, under the guise of seeing how much they got right. She reads up on a long list of kills, a hospital fire.  She doesn’t know how to feel about all of it, is numb to the idea she could do these things so easily. But it wasn’t really her, was it?

\--

A year after the battle of New York, the one from the Red Room begins to talk to her. She calls herself тень. She is mechanical and cruel, ancient and ambivalent.  She reminds Natasha of a machine, although a machine wouldn’t speak of a man turned weapon as fondly as she does of the asset.

\--

This is the real reason why Wanda scares her so much. She doesn't want her teammates to know she's a changeling occupying the body of someone else long gone, someone  better, someone brighter. Someone real. But at least she’s better than the shadow.

\--

Some things give her panic attacks and she doesn't know why. She gets flashes of memories she's never lived, and when this happens, elsewhere inside her head, she can hear echoes of a little girl screaming like she’s dying.

\--

Over the years she discovers that there are more, and together they are the shattered remnants of a little girl who insisted on being called Anastasia because she had always wanted to be a princess.


End file.
